“Prove it,” she trilled.
He kissed her again, burying a hand in her soft shining hair. He ran his other hand up and down the luscious curves of her torso, palming her breast. She made a little humming moan at that, and he cultivated the moan into a little breathy cry as he thumbed her nipple. “I’ve been thinking about this since I first saw you,” she whispered. “But I thought it would never happen.”
“It’s happening…now!” He picked her up and walked into the bedroom. He flung her onto the bed and stepped out of his jeans in one motion. She reached out for the mother of pearl snaps on his shirt and ripped them open all at once; he’d pushed the flowing gauze up and out of the way. The length of their bodies pressing together was electric.
His prick was throbbing. He immersed his face in her hair, nipping her neck, moving down her body, tonguing her breasts but not stopping there. Finally finding her exquisite ebony-enrobed vulva, he teased the hair with his breath. She was breathing so hard, he had a moment’s concern for her well-being, but she didn’t seem to be in distress; far from it. So he set about relieving the disquiet she was unambiguously feeling, his tongue teasing its way between her lips until it found the secret center of joy. She called like spring birdsong as he settled into a rhythm on her clit. Just as her pelvis tightened and rose from the mattress, he stopped.
He slid up her body and kissed her with the taste of her own juices. As he did so, he sunk inside her, enveloped by a delicious snug warmth. He moved as slowly as he could, trying to make it last, but she was bucking, crazy with being almost there and then denied.
When her orgasm squeezed him, he began to thrust with abandon. It still took him a few more strokes, with her moans growing softer and more satisfied sounding. The last beat made him buck in his turn, consumed by the pulsing of his climax deep inside her.
It felt like a long time before either of them spoke. He found himself wanting to hold her like this, in this moment, in a place outside the passage of time. He had just come by for some fun, but her words about not thinking this would ever happen made him recall the sadness he’d felt the prior year, when they’d first come here and he’d realized she was still married and he was, if not committed to Deirdre, visibly coupled with her. He’d realized then that Gaby was the kind of woman that he wanted to come together with cleanly—not sneaking around, not hurting a friend’s feelings, not filled with doubt about her husband’s fate. Lying here now, he felt a quiet elation that it had so come to pass.
Not Her Too.
Suzanne was surprised how quickly she settled into the household. When the US Military’s rigid, secular organization made up mostly of men disintegrated into a nightmare of aggression and danger, she’d felt lost and brokenhearted. Only the birth of her sweet Jomana (named after the base’s Amharic translator, who’d held her hand while she delivered), and the kindling of the fierce need to keep her safe and well at all costs, had given her back a sense of life purpose.
Now she was in a household made up of all women, except for the benevolent and charismatic Sheik Musa himself—the Muslim cleric to whom so many of the girls had fled, abandoning their families’ rigid strictures. They were tying together the traditions of the Islam grafted on top of Northern African traditions dating back five thousand years or more, to the Cushites and Nubians.
Suzanne was picking up their polyglot creole of Arabic, Afar, and Amharic a word or two at a time. Musa, Meala, and a few others spoke some English. And now came Li, who spoke American English with almost native fluency. Because of this, Suzanne and Meala gravitated towards the marooned Chinese. Suzanne was enjoying speaking her native tongue with a fluent speaker, and Meala was determined to improve her English.
Meala had already been spending time in halting conversation with Suzanne, but now she could listen to the two of them speak idiomatically, moving her lips at times, and her English was progressing by leaps and bounds.
“So, how did you say these women came to be here?” Li was asking.
“I think this is right,” said Suzanne, “…tell me if I’m wrong, Meala?” The girl nodded. “Is that the Afar tribes these girls are from still practice infibulation, and the governments of Djibouti and Eritrea were trying to wipe out the practice.”
“Infib—what?”
“Female Genital Mutilation. Cutting.”
“Oh.” Awkward silence. “I’m sorry I asked.”
“Anyway, Musa belongs to a more modern, progressive school of traditional North African Islam. The government was supporting him to go on outreach trips into the rural desert areas with the public health doctors and nurses, to teach them that the practice is haram, not in accord with Islam, rather than halal. They were getting a lot of pushback from the traditional midwives and herb women in the villages. Just before the machine sickness came on, there were some other imams from the other side of the Red Sea, who were trying to organize a return to the traditional ways. A bunch of the young women took off and ran away.” She looked at Meala for confirmation.
“Yes,” Meala nodded. “Girls run away a lot, but this time there were many of us at same time, and Musa gave us a place to go. Musa is good. Usual is, girl hides in bush until she gets hungry, then comes back.”
“The little girl, Hawa, was going to have it done too. Sometimes they do it to newborn babies.” Suzanne spit the words out more angrily than she’d intended, but the thought of someone harming an infant that way affected her more than it might have if she weren’t nursing her own Jomana. With Manuel thousands of miles away across desert and ocean, she had to protect the baby herself, be both mother and father. She refused to believe she’d never see him again, refused to consider that he wasn’t alive, but the distance seemed insurmountable now that modern transportation had come to a halt. “So, tell me about the boat you were on,” she said. It was probably too abrupt a change of subject, but Li took it in stride, and even Meala followed the change in topic despite her limited English.
“I don’t know a lot about it. I was kidnapped and forced into a work crew on board. These guys—I guess you’d call them a gang—were coming to Africa because they’d heard that the machine sickness didn’t affect you here…”
“Wrong!”
“Yeah. I don’t know where they’d gotten that idea. Probably had a boat come in from the Chinese navy base here in Djibouti or one of the railroad-building groups that’s been putting in the trains connecting Djibouti and Addis Ababa just before the virus started to spread.”
“So the boat…”
“The boat was a replica of an old Chinese exploration junk. I wish you could have seen it in full sail! The way the sails were constructed like the wings of a bat. Elegant.” His eyes took a faraway look.
Unnoticed, Meala smiled, looking at him.
“Anyway,” he said, “we were slave laborers for rowing when the wind was calm. That wasn’t fun.” He worked his hands open and closed, remembering the stiffness that paralyzed them after hours of working those oars.
“I wonder if those ships could make it to North America?” mused Suzanne.
“I know!” Meala piped up, “you need Somali boat! Somalis great fishers. Build boats old way again.”
“I’ve seen them,” Suzanne agreed. “Sailing along just in sight of land. They look a little like Spanish galleons.”
“That could work.” Li furrowed his brow. “One of those could get me back to China, too.”
“Chinese live at base in Djibouti,” said Meala.
“That’s right. There was a Chinese base right near the AFRICOM installation I was stationed at. This is a crucial chokepoint for the Red Sea, and all the countries wanted a foothold. I don’t know if the Chinese base was in any better shape than the US base.”
“Maybe I’ll go check it out once I’m all healed up.” Li still had some deep, healing wounds on his head, arms, and legs where the volcanic rock had gouged him while he was near drowning. He rose stiffly now, and the women followed him up the hill towards the compou
nd. A group had gone to market, and those who’d stayed behind were in the kitchen preparing the evening meal, so the cool rooms were quiet and soothing.
Meala yawned. “Sleepy. I go lie down.”
“Sounds good. I guess I’ll go too. See you in the dorm in a minute.” Suzanne headed for the toilets. Li watched Meala sway through the big arched doorway. Then he turned to go to his own quarters.
He had only gotten a few steps when a scream pierced the tranquil half-light. “That’s Meala!” She sounded enraged.
He ran towards the sound, followed by the women from the kitchen, six or eight of them, and Suzanne, fastening her pants as she ran. Meala screeched again, something incoherent, as the first of the women passed Li and rounded the doorway into the room the noise was coming from.
Li stopped, not comprehending for a moment. Meala was still bellowing in rage. Her headwrap had fallen down her back. She was slapping and grabbing wildly at a huge, dark mass which Li figured out was Sheik Musa, cowering under crossed arms and completely naked.
On the bed, partially concealed by the festoons of mosquito netting, was little Hawa, gathered into a wary fetal crouch that did not hide the fact that she, too, was nude.
Li stood gobsmacked as the women flooded around him into the room. They chattered among themselves in their languages, outrage growing in each one’s voice as she understood what was going on. Shortly, Musa was prone on the floor in a ball, bleeding from his scalp where huge clumps of his hair were torn out, crying and begging for mercy. Kicks in the ribs and kidneys had him crying and groaning in pain.
Li tried to restrain some of the women with little success. Just as he got one pair of hands under control, another would replace them, and the woman he held would kick and writhe until she got free to return. Li also wasn’t trying very hard. The behavior the women were punishing was too vile.
As they spent their fury, the rain of kicks and punches tapered off like a bag of popcorn finishing up in the microwave. The women stood in a circle over their former savior, chattering at one another about what to do. Li couldn’t follow most of what they said, but they seemed to be divided into a camp which wanted Musa punished more, who punctuated their words with kicks and blows, and a camp which was preaching some sort of restraint.
Gravel shifted outside. A donkey brayed softly, and the jute-tired, alcohol-fueled vehicles of the shopping brigade pulled up. The rest of the women came inside, calling out when they found the main room empty.
A few of the debaters went out to talk to them. Musa cautiously raised his head, and got a bare foot in his teeth for his trouble. Hawa jumped off the bed and ran off, Meala on her tail. Li wavered, wanting to support Meala in comforting Hawa, but his curiosity about what would befall Musa was too strong. He stayed put.
Loud voices from the hall. The small sleeping chamber was suddenly thronged by the colorful attire of the women, packed together like riders on a Shanghai train at quitting time, their feminine sweat mingling with the smell of blood and fresh urine coming from Musa on the floor. The heat of their bodies in the small space was no hotter than the anger in their voices and eyes. The only thing protecting Musa at that point was that none of them could step back far enough to really swing her foot or fist at him.
Suzanne waded into melee with a soldier’s confidence, shoving the shorter, younger women aside with shoulder and hip, and grabbed Musa by one arm. She forced the arm behind his back as she lifted him upright, the women around her helping lift him. He was carried by the outraged mob without his feet touching the floor, his eyes squeezed shut against the gouging fingers that wriggled towards them.
The women cast him face-down in the dust outside. As she looked down at him, Suzanne realized she had saved the man’s life, however briefly, and then considered that this man had rescued her. Why?
A dark, sinking gulf opened in her emotions as she realized that he had rescued little Jo as well. How young did he like them? She wanted to vomit.
Li hung back in fascination at the top of the three steps to the broad entryway. The women began a chant of some sort. The chant ended, and they then segued into some sort of formal dialogue in Afar. Musa tried to rise twice, and twice the women kicked him prone again, standing on the backs of his hands with their bare feet.
Meala and Hawa emerged from inside. Hawa’s face was streaked with tears but she was otherwise calm. “The oldest woman acts first,” Meala explained to both Li and Hawa. The oldest woman in the compound was only thirty, a friendly woman with a ready smile named Bilqis. She was not smiling today. “I guess that the eldest is not so old in our group.”
Bilqis stepped forward, a fury in her red cotton robe, and the others subsided. She was holding a chunk of rock the size of a boot in her strong, callused hands. She lifted the stone above her head and brought it down, releasing it with a guttural cry. The women began to clap and chant something Li did not understand in Afar.
A grisly rhythmic dance began: women swirled out of the group, snatched rocks, and burrowed back between their companions. Each thud! was followed by a high-pitched ululation of the mob. They threw back their heads, the ones with filed teeth looking like wolves flashing their fangs, and howled.
Finally, when Musa was nothing but a poorly-ground piece of meat and offal at their feet, Bilqis raised her arms. “Stop!” she shouted in Afar. The women’s energy was starting to flag by that moment, and so their chanting and clapping did not take long to fade to silence.
They stood, catching their breath, when at once a piercing cry rang out. It was the muezzin of the nearby mosque. He was calling the men to mid-afternoon Asr prayer. The women glanced at one another.
“There are no more men here,” Bilqis said.
Meala stole a glance at Li and touched two fingers to his hand. He might have begged to differ, but he prudently kept silent.
Bilqis took off her headscarf, revealing the beaded headband beneath. She tossed her head and ululated, a longer, broader, fuller-throated version of the little yelps the women had been making when each stone struck the pedophile priest. Another woman drew the fierce, curved gile dagger her brother had gifted her from inside her waistband. Then, like a sussuration of starlings changing vectors in flight, the entire group was on the move, twining thongs and belts and scarves in their hands or clutching rocks.
The women swarmed into the mosque. Moments later, the call to prayer was abruptly cut short. Li shaded his eyes and made out the red of Bilqis’s dress pressed against the white of the muezzin’s dishdasha. He made out her red scarf about his neck. After a few minutes, the muezzin fell from the tower balcony, a white kite with a red tail trailing behind.
Bilqis began to ululate once more, but her song now was a little different. It was a combination of the traditional Qafar Afar vocal styling with the music of the Adhaan call to worship Allah.
“It is good,” murmured Meala by his shoulder. She glanced down at silent wide-eyed Hawa. “Men should not sing or play music. This is the Afar way.”
Bilqis cried out in an ecstasy that tugged at Li’s soul, but struck fear into his heart. The other women crowded onto the balcony turret and sang back to her, in call and response. Meala translated for Li:
Mother is great
Nefertiri Queen is lady
Elegant, boss of everywhere
I testify that she
Is who is
I bear witness that there are a million gods
None greater than the queen of the vultures
Come to prayer
Call the vultures
Come to prayer
Call the vultures
A buzz arose within the sound of the women’s calls, then grew louder until it overwhelmed them. Li gimballed in place, trying to get a fix on where the sound was coming from. He spotted the source moments after the women in the tower, who now began calling, “The vultures! The vultures!” in excitement.
Li took Meala by one hand and Hawa by the other and led them inside. He made them lie down
in the sunken living room’s center. The buzzing grew louder, and he risked a look outside. He had been right; the buzzing sound was coming from three drones, their faceless silhouettes unmistakable against the blue afternoon sky. He lay down again, wondering, how did they fuel those things? How do they control them with all electronics down? Is it true that there are places here untouched by the machine sickness?
“Chinese drones,” Meala breathed. “They come from the Chinese base.”
The vultures cruised low, their suspended payloads of bombs like peapods clutched beneath them. They circled the compound and the mosque three times, the women raising their hands in adulation from the tower. The men in the street who had been making their way to the mosque dropped to the ground in fear of taking fire, but the women pelted them with the rocks they’d brought.
The drones turned and went on their way, climbing out to the northwest, for purposes Li could not fathom. Li took Meala in his arms and held her closely for a long time.
For the Common Good
Stonegood was sitting in his office, working in the patch of sunlight that came in through the window and dried the ink on the pages quickly, averting smudges. He unconsciously registered the sound of the giant steel-and-copper press becoming deeper-pitched and softer until it stopped. He set the last page of the days’ compilations of news on top of the stack at the end of the desk. The thumps of bundles of papers being stacked for distribution came from the next room.
He watched the first of the paper boys come up to the building. He called them “paper boys” in his mind, but in fact, they were not all boys; some of them were women and some were full-grown men. They arrived on ATVs, on foot, on mule and horseback, and in wagons. Each took a stack of papers suitable for his or her distribution area, dropped off payment for yesterday’s stack along with any unsold copies and a form enumerating the locations and types of sales, and left hauling the evening’s news.
Eupocalypse Box Set Page 41